One of the problems with our information age is that there's always something incoming, demanding our attention. Podcasts and RSS feeds are great, but sometimes they can feel like a bit of a chore, another thing for the to-do list.

For such a simple sport, people can really make running complicated. Fancy shoes, performance fabrics, nutrition supplements, and GPS watches all give us opportunities to spend money, while there’s a whole industry devoted to thinking up ever more inventive training regimes.

Traveling by bicycle is, actually, my personal antidote to a good deal of life's irreconcilable vexatiousness. It is, after all, a simple thing to succeed at - not simple in the sense of easy (it's not) but simple in the sense of uncomplicated. However far you go, your achievement is measurable and unequivocal. You make an enormous effort, you worry about all sorts of things, you strain and sweat, you self-examine, self-aggrandise, and self-loathe, you exult, you despair, you exult again and despair again, but at the end of the day, at the end of the journey, you've arrived at a destination or you haven't. What a relief from life's more common challenges - family, work, love - and their irreducible ambiguities.
There's an hour or so at the end of each day, when I swing my leg out of the saddle ... during which I feel indisputably worthy as a human being, someone who has spent the day profitably and deserves happiness.